


I Remember You

by Arokel



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e05 A Life in the Day, Episode: s03e06 Do You Like Teeth?, I made a high king/high key joke and I'm pretty proud of myself, M/M, it's fluffy, it's short, what more do you want from me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 13:57:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18316628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arokel/pseuds/Arokel
Summary: It's been three days since Margo's wedding, and Quentin won't look at Eliot.





	I Remember You

**Author's Note:**

> I'm too stressed about what's gonna happen to write anything even tangentially monster-related.
> 
> This is unbeta'd and written in a day, but I've got bigger fish to fry so I had to put it out here before I forgot about it. You're welcome?

High King Eliot is high key struggling, okay? He’s got an infestation of nightmare-fuel fairies, Margo is in _prison_ for refusing to have sex with a _child_ , and those aforementioned pasty cockholes are insisting Eliot help facilitate a statutory rape. Eliot wishes he could return to that little cottage and fucking mosaic in his memories almost daily. And hey, funny he should be dwelling on that every waking second, because in addition to all _that_ , Quentin won’t look at him, as if Eliot needed any more interpersonal disasters he is royally unequipped to deal with.

And the thing is that dealing with all of those disasters would be so much _easier_ with Quentin and Margo at his side. Margo’s out of commission until Eliot can figure out a way to get her out of this fucked up consummation without that fairy bitch finding out, but Quentin is _right there,_ literally _at his side_ , only he’s _not_. He’s keeping a distance that feels more personal than conspiratorial, because Quentin is shit at espionage and should not be this good at making himself invisible.

And Eliot doesn’t understand _why_ Quentin is avoiding him, what the hell is so much more important than bringing back _all of magic_ that Quentin is willing to sabotage the entire quest just so he doesn’t have to be in the same room as Eliot.

It has something to do with their other lives, with the mosaic, and their… _family_ , Jesus fuck. Eliot knows that much. Quentin hasn’t been the same since he read that letter and Eliot said ‘I love you.’ So that’s a pretty big clue. And yeah, Quentin looked _disappointed_ when Eliot turned him down, but that was what he wanted. He must have remembered that by now. He shouldn’t be averting kicked-puppy eyes any time Eliot enters his line of sight _still_ , not after three days of whispering and conspiring and interactions that traditionally require eye contact. Avoiding eye contact is Quentin’s second-best party trick, of course, but not with _Eliot_. This is ridiculous. Eliot does not like it.

He didn’t kick any puppies, anyway. If anyone kicked anyone, it was Quentin; knocked Eliot to the ground and stomped on his heart just like every other straight boy Eliot stupidly fell for when he said ‘why the fuck not?’ Eliot has made the mistake of trusting those words too many times to fall for it this time, but the fact that it’s _Quentin_ … that fucking hurts.

But Eliot’s a big boy, and a High King, and he can repress shit like that, so he meets Quentin’s eyes and doesn’t sulk even if he wakes up still expecting Quentin at his side every goddamn morning. Or he would meet Quentin’s eyes, if Quentin wasn’t so fascinated by his own shoes that Eliot could almost mistake him for the flustered nerd he was before he became a king of Fillory. Before they lived a lifetime in each other’s pockets, before Eliot gave up on mirrors and only knew what his own eyes looked like reflected in Quentin’s.

It’s the same way Quentin looked after their emotion-induced threesome, and Eliot is _tired of it._ Tired of Quentin’s noble fucking _guilt_ getting in the _way_ of everything. Eliot can _handle it_. He’s not going to fall to pieces just because the love of his not-life asked him out and didn’t mean it.

He says as much to Quentin.

“Eliot, can we not… talk about this?” Quentin says, tucking his hair behind his ear in a defensive move Eliot recognizes from every time Quentin avoided a conversation for _fifty fucking years._ “I know that’s what you think, but I really can’t –“

“No, Q. We have to talk about this, because your stupid _guilt_ is getting in the way of the quest, and – I really need my friend back.”

Quentin laughs hollowly. “Your friend, yeah. ‘Cause that’s what we both want to be.”

“Q –“

“Look, can we – can we not keep doing this? I’ve had a lot of people rejecting me in my life lately and it’d be great if we could keep it to once per person.”

Ah. So this is about Alice. That makes a disappointing amount of sense. And it serves to confirm what Eliot knew about the ephemerality of Quentin’s proposal, so at least he can put a nail in that coffin.

“I get that you’re upset about Alice. But what’s important _right now_ is finding this key –“

“You think this is about Alice?” Quentin interrupts. “After, after fucking – _fifty years_ of not thinking about her, after I got married to _someone else_ , you think this is about my ex-girlfriend who hates me for turning her back from a soulless monster?”

That almost makes sense. But – “That wasn’t you. That wasn’t _us._ We didn’t live that life.”

“Bull _shit_ we didn’t live that life. We _remember it._ Maybe you can let that go, fine, okay, I can live with that, but I can’t. Not after learning how I –“ Quentin closes his eyes. Eliot prepares for the same spiel he got on the steps of Margo’s bridal torture chamber, but when Quentin opens his eyes, _finally_ looking at Eliot, what he says is, “I love Alice as a friend, now. I have for a – I don’t know, a while. But that’s not how I love you. Okay?”

For a second, Quentin looks mortified, like he meant to keep that a secret. And if it were _true_ – but Quentin shakes his head, dropping his gaze again. “I can’t do this right now. I can’t put my heart on the line again just so you can tell me I’m stupid for thinking the way we felt about each other then could carry over into this timeline. Maybe it didn’t for you, and that’s _okay_ , but you can’t stand here and say you know how I’m feeling better than I do. You might be High King and everyone else might have to listen to what you say, but you’re being a royal dick right now and I’m not everyone else. Which you would know if you actually fucking paid attention.”

And then he _leaves_ , before Eliot can tell him how wrong he is. Which was sort of the point of his whole speech, technically, but it still isn’t fair. Witty rejoinders are about all Eliot has left to him right now, and Quentin just leaves him there with his mouth hanging open like the idiot everyone in this godsforsaken kingdom is making him look.

And it’s almost – if Eliot didn’t know better, if he didn’t know Quentin and didn’t know how Quentin’s face went stark white when he woke up in bed with Eliot in this timeline, the timeline that _matters_ , he almost might believe him.

But that’s more idiotic than standing with his mouth open in a corridor where any pro-child molestation fairy could happen across him and force him to do something he’ll regret even more than turning Quentin down.

Quentin doesn’t love Eliot. Only Margo loves Eliot, and Eliot is about to ruin that, just like he ruined him and Quentin, unless he can stop _thinking about it_ and concentrate on not betraying the one person who hasn’t abandoned him because he’s a fuckup who can’t save his friends.

But he _can’t_ stop thinking about it because Quentin won’t fucking _leave it alone_. He still won’t look at Eliot, but now he’s _there_ , as ever-present in person as he is in Eliot’s thoughts, very pointedly looking literally anywhere other than Eliot. He doesn’t look, he doesn’t touch. But it doesn’t _matter,_ because even just _standing there_ is too much. Quentin proved that he could sit two feet away and overturn Eliot’s entire world.

Eliot is close to praying to anyone who might listen for Quentin to leave him alone for just an _hour_ , because the longer Quentin is in his presence the weaker his resolve gets. He needs Quentin to figure out the next step of the quest _now_ so that they can have something to talk about, at least, other than occasional wondering murmurs of ‘we had _grandkids._ ’

It’s hard to reconcile that with _this._ Their life in the past was so different, so carefree, so _not fraught with world-ending disasters_. There’s no comparing them. And yet Eliot _wants to_. It’s Quentin’s fault; he’s the one who said it first. He’s the one who said it was kind of beautiful. And it was.

But it doesn’t belong here, in this ugly, fucked up world. It’s the past, and it should _stay_ in the past, where it can’t be tainted by whatever shitstorm they stumble into next. Every memory that assaults him with a secondhand joy and warmth that doesn’t belong to him only reinforces that knowledge.

It’s just – really, really hard to think all those things and see Quentin trying so hard to fight against them. Because he is fighting; Eliot believes that, at least. That doesn’t mean he _should_ , but it means that Quentin hasn’t realized that yet.

So it’s really imperative that they figure out the next step before Eliot goes and does something stupid like start to believe him. The quest will reveal itself and they can move on with their lives. Or Quentin can move on with his life and Eliot can watch him and pretend he’s not falling apart inside, but that’s basically the same thing.

Eliot comes upon him in the hallway. Quentin looks _miserable_. Like, moreso than usual. This time, though, Eliot knows exactly why: it’s warmer than it has been in the week since they got back, and Quentin is wearing mostly brocade and leather. Eliot has switched over to lighter fabrics, but Quentin’s palace guard disguise means he’s stuck in what are essentially tacky curtains in the vague shape of a tunic and breeches.

“This uniform is like, really sweaty,” Quentin says.

“Yeah, I know,” Eliot says, reaching to adjust Quentin’s ugly leather pauldrons. He brushes his hands down Quentin’s arms as he finishes, smoothing the wrinkles in his sleeves in an unconscious gesture he hasn’t done since – since –

Teddy’s wedding, he remembers, when Quentin had crossed and uncrossed his arms so many times in restless anxiety that his shirt was hopelessly crumpled and his nerves too shot to deal with it. Eliot fixed it, then, not with magic but with gendle hands smoothing and re-tucking, his hand lingering on the small of Quentin’s back, pressing a calming kiss to his temple – no, not his temple. Now-Eliot would kiss Quentin’s temple. Then-Eliot used that hand on Quentin’s back to draw him close and kiss him on the lips, perfunctory, practiced, like the way he kissed Margo sometimes, a reassurance that everything was going to be okay. But not like he kissed Margo, because _their son_ was getting married, and Eliot was just as nervous as Quentin, and he could never raise a child with Margo. He could never raise a child with anybody other than Quentin.

It isn’t only that memory, of course. Their clothes were always wrinkled or covered in tile dust and straightening them was futile, but Eliot did it anyway, when Quentin was too frustrated to continue. It meant _‘this is a fresh start. You can do this.’_

That’s how Eliot means it, without meaning to – and doesn’t that make no sense at all. But the memory that catches him is that of Teddy’s wedding, and Quentin’s eyes go wide and fixed on Eliot like he’s thinking it too. Eliot drops his hands.

Or he tries to, but they won’t obey him, rising to smooth Quentin’s hair and cup his cheeks like the first time Quentin asked Arielle on a date, when Eliot kissed him and Quentin said _‘I’ll never stop loving you, whatever happens now.’_

Quentin opens his mouth and Eliot is gripped with a sudden, heartbreaking fear that those will be his next words, so he releases Quentin, successfully, and says, “okay, key quest. Hit me.”

Quentin looks disappointed but resigned, which is his default expression around Eliot now, but he doesn’t say anything, so Eliot chalks that up as a small victory in this miserable stalemate. Quentin unfolds the paper in his hands.

It’s a lovely dramatic gesture, but they do need to lay it flat to read, so Quentin re-folds the paper and follows Eliot to an out-of-the-way alcove with a table and, more importantly, no spying fairies.

“Okay, hit me again.”

Quentin rolls his eyes, but it looks fond, so Eliot probably didn’t fuck things up too badly back in his hallway. Quentin was probably just surprised since Eliot hasn’t really touched him since the whole ‘we worked’ revelation. Which, if the sudden, vivid remembrances upon any physical contact are a normal thing with this sort of time magic, is maybe a good thing.

“Uh, okay, so I’m pretty sure that the fourth key is somewhere in this stretch of ocean called the Abyss,” Quentin says, sitting way too close and looking way too intently at Eliot. Eliot watches Quentin’s lips move.

Are all his important memories about kissing Quentin? True, kissing Quentin is one of his most important memories in this timeline, but _that_ is a shameful secret and also not at all the same. It’s just that Eliot has yet to remember something that doesn’t involve Quentin or their family, even up to the moment of not-his _death_. If Quentin’s memories work the same way, it’s no wonder it’s all he can think about.

But that Eliot deserved those kisses. That Eliot was a good father and a good partner. This Eliot is an alcoholic adulterer with a changeling teenager for a daughter, and the one time he kissed Quentin he nearly fucked up everything. So whatever Quentin is remembering, it doesn’t matter.

“But, you know, we get to go on a quest on a magical boat, so, doesn’t… totally suck,” Quentin says.

“I wish I could,” Eliot says, and he does, he really, really does, “believe me; but duty calls, it does in different ways, and I can’t leave Margo.”

“Right, of course,” Quentin says, in the same voice he said ‘okay’ when Eliot first realized he could never deserve Quentin, not like his other self did.

“Sorry.”

“No; just looking forward to going on a boating quest with you, but –“

Quentin’s voice is too defeated, and Eliot only knows how to fix things with humor. “Who wouldn’t? Uh, think about it, you can take Benedict, go be life partners with someone else for a little bit.”

He doesn’t mean to sound as sad as he does, but just like he couldn’t stop his hands from touching Quentin, he can’t stop his voice from sounding wistful. He’s sure Quentin hears it.

“You know I don’t want that,” Quentin says softly.

“I know that’s what you think –“

“You _know_ it’s real. You just don’t want to believe it.” Quentin decisively creases the last fold of the map, turning in his seat to bracket Eliot’s knees between his thighs. “Fuck the quest. I’ll wait until you figure out this Margo shit, and then I will get you alone on that boat, where you can’t run away, and I will pin you to the wall and I will _prove_ to you that this is real.”

Eliot gapes. Quentin, _abandon_ the quest? Not possible. Quentin wouldn’t do that for anyone. Not even Alice. Except -

They fought, once, different from the rest of their fights. Eliot made the mistake of voicing aloud his fear that _whatever_ they were would end once they solved the mosaic, and Quentin took offense at the insinuation that it wasn’t _real_ , that it couldn’t exist outside the quest. _‘You want to live your life, live it here,’_ Eliot said, goading, and Quentin looked him dead in the eye and kicked over a stack of tiles.

Quentin refused to work on the mosaic for a month. To prove a point he didn’t need to prove, Eliot told him, but Quentin waited and whispered that he didn’t want to solve it if it meant losing Eliot, and Eliot believed him.

Quentin abandoned the quest, then, and he is offering to do it now, just to prove something to Eliot. Eliot believed him once.

“Q –“

Quentin kisses him.

Eliot remembers Quentin’s kisses. Every single one of them. He wishes he didn’t, because they make saying no harder, but he will never give them up, either. Those kisses were full of the love Quentin talks so earnestly about now, and if Eliot can’t have that here then he will at least have the memory of it.

This kiss is just like all the others.

“Just give it a try?” Quentin murmurs, impossibly sincere. “For my sake? If you hate it, if it really isn’t you, I’ll let it go, but this _is_ me, and I’m tired of letting you talk yourself out of it. So I’m trying the thing were you don’t get to talk.”

Quentin is obviously underestimating Eliot’s ability to _think_ his way out of things, but kissing him is an admittedly effective way of stopping that too. He can’t quite bring himself to kiss Quentin back, but he does let himself _be_ kissed, because if it’s all on Quentin’s end then Eliot can still reject him with a clear conscience. Or a murky conscience, at least. Partly overcast.

But this kiss is so like every other, and other-Eliot would never leave Quentin hanging like this. He would never prey on other-Quentin’s insecurities by _not kissing back_ when all he _ever_ wants is to kiss Quentin.

Quentin starts to pull away. Eliot reasons that his conscience is about as clear as a pre-fairy wellspring already, so he slides one hand around to the back of Quentin’s neck, just like the first time they kissed, on that mosaic-tile blanket when Quentin went out on a _fucking_ limb and Eliot met him halfway for once in his goddamn life, and kisses back.

Quentin’s eyes fly open. Eliot feels his eyelashes brush his cheek and knows that Quentin’s brain is shifting into dangerously high gear, but that’s okay, they’re okay, Eliot knows how to handle this, he’s got fifty years of practice in slowing it down. He uses his hold on Quentin’s neck to tilt his head into a better angle and tangles his fingers in Quentin’s hair, tugging almost imperceptibly in a way it took him _years_ to learn, before.

He hears Quentin’s breath catch, feels his eyes flutter shut again as he relaxes into the kiss. It’s exactly how Eliot remembers, exactly like the kisses that invade his thoughts every goddamn second that he isn’t kissing Quentin for real.

Eliot can’t doubt this.

“Kinda didn’t ask for my consent there, Q,” he says. “Bit of a faux pas, considering the Margo situation.”

“Sorry,” Quentin mutters, trying to pull away. Eliot doesn’t let him.

“Every morning I wake up in this awful fucking magic-less world, and you know what the worst part is?” he says, fingers wrapped tight in Quentin’s hair, keeping him tethered only centimeters away. “That I can’t kiss you hello.”

Quentin smiles the first real smile Eliot has seen from him in seven whole days. “Well. Hello.” He leans in again, perfunctory, practiced, still smiling against Eliot’s lips. “Does this mean you’ll try?”

“Q, I have loved you since I told you I killed a kid with a bus, plus whatever fifty years of memories translates to. I don’t need to try. If you really, truly want this, I will never let you go.” He pulls away, regretful. “But I still can’t go with you on your epic boat quest.”

Quentin’s smile fades. He sighs. “I know. I just – it’s hard to give you up again.”

“You’re not giving me up,” Eliot promises, wrapping his arm around Quentin to pull him into a hug. “I’ll be right here when you get back, kowtowing to the worst version of Tinkerbell you can possibly imagine. But – you’ll be able to do the thing on the prow of a ship you’ve been waiting your whole life to do.”

Quentin leans his head into Eliot’s chest and Eliot’s heart fucking _sings_ , like that time Margo enchanted the entire castle to perform _Les Mis._  “What thing?”

“You know, the thing,” Eliot murmurs, pressing a kiss to Quentin’s forehead. But no – that’s not right. That’s before-Eliot. Now-Eliot lets Quentin tilt his face up for a real kiss and tries to quiet his heart.

“How am I supposed to do the Titanic pose without you?”

“The other thing,” Eliot says, “but I promise we’ll do the Titanic thing another time.”


End file.
